Beyond the grass and tall weeds sprouting from a netless volleyball court, past an outhouse inhabited only by spiders, behind busted swings dangling from rusted chains and the remnants of fireworks strewn on the site of a burned-down pavilion, Richard Velky will find peace.

"My final resting place," said Velky, chief of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation, gesturing to the location of his ancestral burial ground on Schaghticoke Road along the Housatonic River. "My last journey. Be with the people who brought us here."

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